


On Phil Dying

by tyroneslothrop



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Who else loves to over-analyze everything?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 14:56:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6120028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyroneslothrop/pseuds/tyroneslothrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Why am I always dead? I swear whenever I read fanfiction, I'm dead.' - Phil Lester, philosopher, 2014</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Phil Dying

For as long as I've been in fandoms, I've noticed each ship has distinct tropes, ones that would seem out of place when ascribed to any other pairing. All these tropes have reasons behind them, whether it's due to how these people have acted in public or the discourse the fans have created around them. (For instance, could you imagine a story about Louis Tomlinson the homophobe, who goes through an sexual awakening when meeting Harry, being written about Dave Strider and John Egbert? I can't.) So, of all the years I've spent consuming writing by these fandoms, the one that baffles me the most is the Dan and Phil fandom. Why does Phil always die? Why is Dan the subject of interest in almost every third-person fanfic? Why are there so many fluff fics where Phil coddles Dan after he's had a breakdown, but none of the reverse? I believe I might have an answer.

Dan and Phil market themselves as though they were literary foils. Whereas Dan is angsty and contemplative, Phil is a never-ending beacon of positivisty, toting the belief that we should all 'be happy' and 'embrace our weirdness'. Dan deals in irony and self-deprecation, Phil in cuteness and bewilderment. This is done so that, when their personalities converge for a video, they contrast in the most pleasurable way. Yin and yang, if I may appropriate the term. It helps them garner views. It helps them build a fanbase. As a result of this, it's a lot easier to assign feelings of grief and helplessness to Dan. If Dan were to die in a fanfic, what would we base Phil's reaction off of? His cheese challenge video? The video where he discusses the things he puts in his suitcase? Phil isn't vacuous, but he doesn't put the same effort into preening his intellectual image as Dan does. Dan likes to let us know that he's read Kierkegaard and he understands the fundamentals of existential theory. We have enough images stored in our head of Dan lying face down on a carpet to put them in a different context. That can't be said for Phil.

There's limited narrative options due to how controlled their public images are. Phanfiction that differs from this mode of thinking tend to become projection. (The only time I've been able to write a decent story about Phil is when I posed myself the hypotheses 'What if Phil is autistic?' and 'What if Phil resents the closet?'). You could maybe pin it down to Phil having less subscribers, or Phil being less 'attractive', but that's lazy. I don't believe it's because of a deep hatred people have for Phil, rather just another example of the creative limitations of fanfic.

In conclusion, RIP Phil.


End file.
